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A drumline in modern Africa. Before the invention of war about 6,000 years ago, non-lethal war games including drum battles between friendly rivals, were common.
Towards a New Definition of Humanity
These times of violence and conditioned hatreds are the dark blip in a very long history of cooperation.
Feb 24, 2018
In the aftermath of massacres there are calls for even more guns and lethal force everywhere, even in houses of worship, hospitals and schools. It is a narcissistic doctrine that feeds on the fear of deadly danger lurking within every neighbor, innocent action, foreign country and differing beliefs and finds its solution in demands that every perceived threat be violently restrained and destroyed.
The common bonds of society are rubbed raw and humanity's long history of faith in friendship and shared goals is abandoned when enemies are everywhere.
Only 3 of the 9 million species of life engage in war and humans are less warlike than the other two - ants and chimps. Yet, humanity's violent nature is presented as an unchallengeable doctrine by professors, preachers and politicians, on TV shows and in songs, movies and books. History, they say, is a story of power and domination in the battle for resources.
But what if this agreed upon narrative is wrong? What if humanity and even life itself began and advanced mainly through friendly cooperation and mutually beneficial trade? Let's start at the beginning.
About 700 million years ago a severe drop in global temperatures turned tropical Earth into a slurry of ice and slush for 120 million years. Almost all life was destroyed. The survivors developed specialized functions and worked together to build more complex forms of life in which they all thrived. Sea plants colonized the barren land 450 million years ago because a beneficial fungus migrated into their roots and let them breathe air and use more sunlight. Likewise, early humanity evolved through shared knowledge and resources.
Despite what most people think, human war - as distinct from individual acts of violence - is a recent invention. According to Scientific American and other journals there is no fossil or archaeological evidence of human warfare anywhere on Earth before about 6,000 years ago. None. Prehistoric cave paintings set down between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago were the newspapers of the prehistoric world. There is no depiction of human conflict in any of them.
The few examples of prehistoric human on human violence that exist involve few people, are rare and far apart in time and geography, and there is no way of knowing intent. What does the fossil evidence and recorded history say about humanity's original culture?
People have three kinds of relationships - friends, opponents and neutrals. If humanity were fearful there would be evidence of security systems. Yet, 3 million years of prehistoric artifacts show no war weapons and the first defensive walls around settlements are about 5,000 years old. If early humans were isolationists, our global culture of trade, language and shared technology would not have been born. Words were humanity's first currency. They were coins minted on the tongue and only honest words were collected and shared as a language for trade and relationships.
People with freckles and red hair come from mixed human and Neanderthal families. Humans of different kinds have been present throughout history and mixing between ancestral humans was commonplace.
Between 40,000-10,000 years ago, modern humans were settling the world and spreading their civilization of paintings and symbols. The prehistoric hash tag meant "human settlement," wavy lines indicated "water," and hat-like ones nearby "shelter." What was their purpose? People living in the same place had no need for those symbols. They were street signs to help prehistoric travelers find a village, stream or cave.
For 99.99 percent of history humanity existed without war. The Ancient Greeks said the evils of the world came with it. In Ancient India, that first war is chronicled in their Mahabharata. The Hebrew Bible recalls its effects in the 6,000 year-old story of Eden a tale that remembers the birth of a post-war humanity and the end of "Generation Eden" - the world before war.
Attaining peace is not something humanity needs to grope towards in the future. Neighborliness is what allowed civilization to take root and flourish. These times of violence and conditioned hatreds are the dark blip in a very long history of cooperation.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
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Barry Brown
Barry Brown is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated Canadian journalist and author of Humanity: The World Before Religion, War and Inequality.
In the aftermath of massacres there are calls for even more guns and lethal force everywhere, even in houses of worship, hospitals and schools. It is a narcissistic doctrine that feeds on the fear of deadly danger lurking within every neighbor, innocent action, foreign country and differing beliefs and finds its solution in demands that every perceived threat be violently restrained and destroyed.
The common bonds of society are rubbed raw and humanity's long history of faith in friendship and shared goals is abandoned when enemies are everywhere.
Only 3 of the 9 million species of life engage in war and humans are less warlike than the other two - ants and chimps. Yet, humanity's violent nature is presented as an unchallengeable doctrine by professors, preachers and politicians, on TV shows and in songs, movies and books. History, they say, is a story of power and domination in the battle for resources.
But what if this agreed upon narrative is wrong? What if humanity and even life itself began and advanced mainly through friendly cooperation and mutually beneficial trade? Let's start at the beginning.
About 700 million years ago a severe drop in global temperatures turned tropical Earth into a slurry of ice and slush for 120 million years. Almost all life was destroyed. The survivors developed specialized functions and worked together to build more complex forms of life in which they all thrived. Sea plants colonized the barren land 450 million years ago because a beneficial fungus migrated into their roots and let them breathe air and use more sunlight. Likewise, early humanity evolved through shared knowledge and resources.
Despite what most people think, human war - as distinct from individual acts of violence - is a recent invention. According to Scientific American and other journals there is no fossil or archaeological evidence of human warfare anywhere on Earth before about 6,000 years ago. None. Prehistoric cave paintings set down between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago were the newspapers of the prehistoric world. There is no depiction of human conflict in any of them.
The few examples of prehistoric human on human violence that exist involve few people, are rare and far apart in time and geography, and there is no way of knowing intent. What does the fossil evidence and recorded history say about humanity's original culture?
People have three kinds of relationships - friends, opponents and neutrals. If humanity were fearful there would be evidence of security systems. Yet, 3 million years of prehistoric artifacts show no war weapons and the first defensive walls around settlements are about 5,000 years old. If early humans were isolationists, our global culture of trade, language and shared technology would not have been born. Words were humanity's first currency. They were coins minted on the tongue and only honest words were collected and shared as a language for trade and relationships.
People with freckles and red hair come from mixed human and Neanderthal families. Humans of different kinds have been present throughout history and mixing between ancestral humans was commonplace.
Between 40,000-10,000 years ago, modern humans were settling the world and spreading their civilization of paintings and symbols. The prehistoric hash tag meant "human settlement," wavy lines indicated "water," and hat-like ones nearby "shelter." What was their purpose? People living in the same place had no need for those symbols. They were street signs to help prehistoric travelers find a village, stream or cave.
For 99.99 percent of history humanity existed without war. The Ancient Greeks said the evils of the world came with it. In Ancient India, that first war is chronicled in their Mahabharata. The Hebrew Bible recalls its effects in the 6,000 year-old story of Eden a tale that remembers the birth of a post-war humanity and the end of "Generation Eden" - the world before war.
Attaining peace is not something humanity needs to grope towards in the future. Neighborliness is what allowed civilization to take root and flourish. These times of violence and conditioned hatreds are the dark blip in a very long history of cooperation.
Barry Brown
Barry Brown is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated Canadian journalist and author of Humanity: The World Before Religion, War and Inequality.
In the aftermath of massacres there are calls for even more guns and lethal force everywhere, even in houses of worship, hospitals and schools. It is a narcissistic doctrine that feeds on the fear of deadly danger lurking within every neighbor, innocent action, foreign country and differing beliefs and finds its solution in demands that every perceived threat be violently restrained and destroyed.
The common bonds of society are rubbed raw and humanity's long history of faith in friendship and shared goals is abandoned when enemies are everywhere.
Only 3 of the 9 million species of life engage in war and humans are less warlike than the other two - ants and chimps. Yet, humanity's violent nature is presented as an unchallengeable doctrine by professors, preachers and politicians, on TV shows and in songs, movies and books. History, they say, is a story of power and domination in the battle for resources.
But what if this agreed upon narrative is wrong? What if humanity and even life itself began and advanced mainly through friendly cooperation and mutually beneficial trade? Let's start at the beginning.
About 700 million years ago a severe drop in global temperatures turned tropical Earth into a slurry of ice and slush for 120 million years. Almost all life was destroyed. The survivors developed specialized functions and worked together to build more complex forms of life in which they all thrived. Sea plants colonized the barren land 450 million years ago because a beneficial fungus migrated into their roots and let them breathe air and use more sunlight. Likewise, early humanity evolved through shared knowledge and resources.
Despite what most people think, human war - as distinct from individual acts of violence - is a recent invention. According to Scientific American and other journals there is no fossil or archaeological evidence of human warfare anywhere on Earth before about 6,000 years ago. None. Prehistoric cave paintings set down between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago were the newspapers of the prehistoric world. There is no depiction of human conflict in any of them.
The few examples of prehistoric human on human violence that exist involve few people, are rare and far apart in time and geography, and there is no way of knowing intent. What does the fossil evidence and recorded history say about humanity's original culture?
People have three kinds of relationships - friends, opponents and neutrals. If humanity were fearful there would be evidence of security systems. Yet, 3 million years of prehistoric artifacts show no war weapons and the first defensive walls around settlements are about 5,000 years old. If early humans were isolationists, our global culture of trade, language and shared technology would not have been born. Words were humanity's first currency. They were coins minted on the tongue and only honest words were collected and shared as a language for trade and relationships.
People with freckles and red hair come from mixed human and Neanderthal families. Humans of different kinds have been present throughout history and mixing between ancestral humans was commonplace.
Between 40,000-10,000 years ago, modern humans were settling the world and spreading their civilization of paintings and symbols. The prehistoric hash tag meant "human settlement," wavy lines indicated "water," and hat-like ones nearby "shelter." What was their purpose? People living in the same place had no need for those symbols. They were street signs to help prehistoric travelers find a village, stream or cave.
For 99.99 percent of history humanity existed without war. The Ancient Greeks said the evils of the world came with it. In Ancient India, that first war is chronicled in their Mahabharata. The Hebrew Bible recalls its effects in the 6,000 year-old story of Eden a tale that remembers the birth of a post-war humanity and the end of "Generation Eden" - the world before war.
Attaining peace is not something humanity needs to grope towards in the future. Neighborliness is what allowed civilization to take root and flourish. These times of violence and conditioned hatreds are the dark blip in a very long history of cooperation.
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